The exile of eight European governments during the Second World War is an extraordinary saga of separate struggles for national survival. In the year between Hitler’s offensives in the West in May 1940 and his invasion of Russia in June 1941, these governments reached England at a time when Britain stood alone against the assault of the Nazi and Fascist powers. What came into being was an unprecedented alliance of governments at war who maintained their sovereignty on foreign soil and together faced the threat of world domination by a cruel tyranny. This book tells their story as a whole for the first time, drawing on documentary sources, some of which have been made available only in recent years.